Contents

Uses

Pitch

The grave accent first appeared in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek to mark a lower pitch than the high pitch of the acute accent. In modern practice, it replaces an acute accent in the last syllable of a word when that word is followed immediately by another word. The grave and circumflex have been replaced with an acute accent in the modern monotonic orthography.

Stress

A general rule in Italian is that words that end with stressed -a, -i, -o, or -u must be marked with a grave accent. Words that end with stressed -e may bear either an acute accent or a grave accent, depending on whether the final e sound is closed or open, respectively. Some examples of words with a final grave accent are città ("city"), morì ("[he/she] died"), virtù ("virtue"), Mosè ("Moses"), and portò ("[he/she/it] brought/carried"). A typist who uses a keyboard without accented characters and is unfamiliar with input methods for typing accented letters sometimes use a separate backtick or even an apostrophe instead of the proper accent. That is nonstandard. It is especially common when typing capital letters: E` or E’ instead of È ("[he/she/it] is"). Other mistakes arise from the misunderstanding of truncated and elided words: the phrase un po’ ("a little"), which is the truncated version of un poco, is mistakenly be spelled as un pò.

Italian has word pairs where one has an accent marked and the other not, with different pronunciation and meaning—such as pero ("pear tree") and però ("but"), and Papa ("Pope") and papà ("dad"); the last example is also valid for Catalan.[citation needed]

In Bulgarian, the grave accent sometimes appears on the vowels а, о, у, е, и, and ъ to mark stress. It most commonly appears in books for children or foreigners, and dictionaries—or to distinguish between near-homophones: па̀ра ("steam/vapour") and пара̀ ("cent/penny, money"), въ̀лна ("wool") and вълна̀ ("wave"). In a few cases (mostly on the vowels е and и), the stress mark is orthographically required to distinguish homographs (see Disambiguation). Then, it forces the stress on the accented word-syllable instead of having a different syllable in the stress group getting accented. In turn, it changes the pronunciation and the whole meaning of the group.

Ukrainian, Rusyn, Belarusian, and Russian used a similar system until the first half of the 20th century. Now the main stress is preferably marked with an acute, and the role of the grave is limited to marking secondary stress in compound words (in dictionaries and linguistic literature).

In the descendants of Serbo-Croatian and in Slovene, the stressed syllable can be short or long and have a rising or falling tone. They use (in dictionaries, orthography, and grammar books, for example) four different stress marks (grave, acute, double grave, and circumflex). The system is identical both in Latin and Cyrillic scripts.

In modern Church Slavonic, there are three stress marks (acute, grave, and circumflex). There is no phonetical distinction between them, only an orthographical one. The grave is typically used when the stressed vowel is the last letter of a multiletter word.

In Ligurian, the grave accent marks the accented short vowel of a word in à (sound [a]), è (sound [ɛ]), ì (sound [i]) and ù (sound [y]). For ò, it indicates the short sound of [o], but may not be the stressed vowel of the word.[citation needed]

French uses the accent on three letters (a, e, and u). For example, the accent mark in lève [lεv], indicates that it is not pronounced as the schwa in lever [ləve]. The "ù" is used in only one word, "où", and it is homophonic with "ou".

Ligurian also uses the grave accent to distinguish the sound [o], written ò, from the sound [u], written ó.

Disambiguation

In several languages, the grave accent distinguishes both homophones and words that otherwise would be homographs:

In Bulgarian and Macedonian, it distinguishes the conjunction и ("and") from the short-form feminine possessive pronoun ѝ.

In Catalan, it distinguishes, for example, ma ("my") from mà ("hand").

French. The grave accent on the letters a and u has no effect on pronunciation and just distinguishes homonyms otherwise spelled the same. It distinguishes the preposition à ("to/belonging to/towards") from the verb a (the third-person singular present tense of avoir) as well as the adverb là ("there") and the feminine definite articlela; it is also used in the words déjà ("already"), deçà (preceded by en or au, and meaning "closer than" or "inferior to (a given value)"), the phrase çà et là ("hither and thither"; without the accents, it would literally mean "it and the") and its functional synonym deçà, delà. It is used on the letter u only to distinguish où ("where") and ou ("or"). È is rarely used to distinguish homonyms except in dès/des ("since/some"), ès/es ("in/(thou) art"), and lès/les ("near/the").

In Italian, it distinguishes, for example, the conjunction e ("and") from the verb è ("he/she/it is"), the feminine article la from the adverb là ("there"), or the conjunction se ("if") from the reflexive pronoun sé ("itself"). The first two examples involve two homographs, and the last involves two homophones.

In Norwegian (both Bokmål and Nynorsk), the grave accent separates words that would otherwise be identical: og (and) and òg (too). Popular usage, possibly because Norwegian rarely uses diacritics, often leads to a grave accent in place of an acute accent.

Other uses

In Emilian-Romagnol, a grave accent placed over e o denotes both lenght and openness. In Emilianè ò represent [ɛː, ɔː], while in Romagnol they represent [ɛ, ɔ].

In Portuguese, the grave accent indicates the contraction of two consecutive vowels in adjacent words (crasis). For example, instead of a aquela hora ("at that hour"), one says and writes àquela hora.

In Hawaiian, the grave accent is not placed over another character but is sometimes encountered as a typographically easier substitute for the ʻokina: Hawai`i instead of Hawaiʻi.

English

The grave accent, though rare in English words, sometimes appears in poetry and song lyrics to indicate that a usually-silent vowel is pronounced to fit the rhythm or meter. Most often, it is applied to a word that ends with -ed. For instance, the word looked is usually pronounced /ˈlʊkt/ as a single syllable, with the e silent; when written as lookèd, the e is pronounced: /ˈlʊkᵻd/look-ed). In this capacity, it can also distinguish certain pairs of identically spelled words like the past tense of learn, learned/ˈlɜːrnd/, from the adjectivelearnèd/ˈlɜːrnᵻd/ (for example, "a very learnèd man").

The layout of some European PC keyboards combined with problematic keyboard driver semantics causes many users to use a grave accent or an acute accent instead of an apostrophe when typing in English (e.g. typing John`s or John´s instead of John's).[2]

Technical notes

additional
diacritic

character

Unicode

HTML

Latin

—

À
à

U+00C0
U+00E0

&#192;
&#224;

È
è

U+00C8
U+00E8

&#200;
&#232;

Ì
ì

U+00CC
U+00EC

&#204;
&#236;

Ò
ò

U+00D2
U+00F2

&#210;
&#242;

Ù
ù

U+00D9
U+00F9

&#217;
&#249;

Ǹ
ǹ

U+01F8
U+01F9

&#504;
&#505;

Ẁ
ẁ

U+1E80
U+1E81

&#7808;
&#7809;

Ỳ
ỳ

U+1EF2
U+1EF3

&#7922;
&#7923;

diaeresis

Ǜ
ǜ

U+01DB
U+01DC

&#475;
&#476;

double
grave

Ȁ
ȁ

U+0200
U+0201

&#512;
&#513;

Ȅ
ȅ

U+0204
U+0205

&#516;
&#517;

Ȉ
ȉ

U+0208
U+0209

&#520;
&#521;

Ȍ
ȍ

U+020C
U+020D

&#524;
&#525;

Ȑ
ȑ

U+0210
U+0211

&#528;
&#529;

Ȕ
ȕ

U+0214
U+0215

&#532;
&#533;

macron

Ḕ
ḕ

U+1E14
U+1E15

&#7700;
&#7701;

Ṑ
ṑ

U+1E50
U+1E51

&#7760;
&#7761;

circumflex

Ầ
ầ

U+1EA6
U+1EA7

&#7846;
&#7847;

Ề
ề

U+1EC0
U+1EC1

&#7872;
&#7873;

Ồ
ồ

U+1ED2
U+1ED3

&#7890;
&#7891;

breve

Ằ
ằ

U+1EB0
U+1EB1

&#7856;
&#7857;

horn

Ờ
ờ

U+1EDC
U+1EDD

&#7900;
&#7901;

Ừ
ừ

U+1EEA
U+1EEB

&#7914;
&#7915;

Cyrillic

—

Ѐ
ѐ

U+0400
U+0450

&#1024;
&#1104;

Ѝ
ѝ

U+040D
U+045D

&#1037;
&#1117;

Ѷ
ѷ

U+0476
U+0477

&#1142;
&#1143;

Greek (varia)

—

`

U+1FEF

&#8175;

Ὰ
ὰ

U+1FBA
U+1F70

&#8122;
&#8048;

Ὲ
ὲ

U+1FC8
U+1F72

&#8136;
&#8050;

Ὴ
ὴ

U+1FCA
U+1F74

&#8138;
&#8052;

Ὶ
ὶ

U+1FDA
U+1F76

&#8154;
&#8054;

Ὸ
ὸ

U+1FF8
U+1F78

&#8184;
&#8056;

Ὺ
ὺ

U+1FEA
U+1F7A

&#8170;
&#8058;

Ὼ
ὼ

U+1FFA
U+1F7C

&#8186;
&#8060;

smooth
breathing

῍

U+1FCD

&#8141;

Ἂ
ἂ

U+1F0A
U+1F02

&#7946;
&#7938;

Ἒ
ἒ

U+1F1A
U+1F12

&#7962;
&#7954;

Ἢ
ἢ

U+1F2A
U+1F22

&#7978;
&#7970;

Ἲ
ἲ

U+1F3A
U+1F32

&#7994;
&#7986;

Ὂ
ὂ

U+1F4A
U+1F42

&#8010;
&#8002;

—
ὒ

—
U+1F52

—
&#8018;

Ὢ
ὢ

U+1F6A
U+1F62

&#8042;
&#8034;

rough
breathing

῝

U+1FDD

&#8157;

Ἃ
ἃ

U+1F0B
U+1F03

&#7947;
&#7939;

Ἓ
ἓ

U+1F1B
U+1F13

&#7963;
&#7955;

Ἣ
ἣ

U+1F2B
U+1F23

&#7979;
&#7971;

Ἳ
ἳ

U+1F3B
U+1F33

&#7995;
&#7987;

Ὃ
ὃ

U+1F4B
U+1F43

&#8011;
&#8003;

Ὓ
ὓ

U+1F5B
U+1F53

&#8027;
&#8019;

Ὣ
ὣ

U+1F6B
U+1F63

&#8043;
&#8035;

iota
subscript

—
ᾲ

—
U+1FB2

—
&#8114;

—
ῂ

—
U+1FC2

—
&#8130;

—
ῲ

—
U+1FF2

—
&#8178;

smooth
breathing,
iota
subscript

ᾊ
ᾂ

U+1F8A
U+1F82

&#8074;
&#8066;

ᾚ
ᾒ

U+1F9A
U+1F92

&#8090;
&#8082;

ᾪ
ᾢ

U+1FAA
U+1FA2

&#8106;
&#8098;

rough
breathing,
iota
subscript

ᾋ
ᾃ

U+1F8B
U+1F83

&#8075;
&#8067;

ᾛ
ᾓ

U+1F9B
U+1F93

&#8091;
&#8083;

ᾫ
ᾣ

U+1FAB
U+1FA3

&#8107;
&#8099;

diaeresis

῭

U+1FED

&#8173;

—
ῒ

—
U+1FD2

—
&#8146;

—
ῢ

—
U+1FE2

—
&#8162;

The Unicode standard makes dozens of letters with a grave accent available as a combining character. The older ISO-8859-1 character encoding only includes the letters à, è, ì, ò, ù, and their respective capital forms. In the much older, limited 7- or 8-bit ASCII character set, the grave accent is encoded as character 96 (hex 60). Outside the US, character 96 is often replaced by accented letters. In the French ISO 646 standard, the character at this position is µ. Many older UK computers, such as the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro, have the £ symbol as character 96, though the British ISO 646 variant ultimately placed this symbol at position 35 instead.

On many computer keyboards, the grave accent is a key by itself—meant to combine with vowels as a multi-key combination or as a dead key to modify the following letter. On a US and UK QWERTY keyboard, the ` key is placed in the top left corner to the left of the 1 key. On a Czech QWERTZ keyboard, the equivalent keystroke is usually mapped to Alt Gr+ý.

On a Mac, to get a character such as à, the user can type ⌥ Option+` and then the vowel. For example, to make à, the user can type ⌥ Option+` and then a, and to make À, the user can type ⌥ Option+` and then ⇧ Shift+a. In iOS (used on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod), combined characters with the grave accent are accessed by holding a finger on the vowel, which opens a menu for accents. For example, to make à, the user can tap and hold a and then tap or slide to à. Mac versions of OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) or newer share similar functionality to iOS; by pressing and holding a vowel key to open an accent menu, the user may click on the grave accented character or type the corresponding number key displayed.

On a system running the X Window System, to get a character such as à, the user should press Compose followed by `, then the vowel. The compose key on modern keyboards is usually mapped to a ⊞ Win key or ⇧ Shift+Alt Gr.[3]

Use in programming

Programmers use the grave accent symbol as a separate character (i.e., not combined with any letter) for a number of tasks. In this role, it is known as a backquote or backtick.

When using TeX to typeset text, the backtick character represents curly opening quotes. For example, ` is rendered as single opening curly quote (‘) and `` is a double curly opening quote (“). It also supplies the numeric ASCII value of an ASCII character wherever a number is expected.

This is also the format the Markdown formatter uses to indicate code.[4] Some variations of Markdown support "fenced code blocks" that span multiple lines of code, starting (and ending) with three backticks in a row (```).[5]

In many PC-based computer games in the US and UK, the ` key opens the console window so the user can execute script commands via a CLI.[citation needed]

Various programming and scripting languages use the backquote character:

The backquote character (called quasiquote in Scheme) introduces a quoted expression in which comma-substitution may occur. It is identical to the plain quote, except that symbols prefixed with a comma are replaced with those symbols' values as variables. This is roughly analogous to the Bourne shell's variable interpolation with $ inside double quotes.

Prior to version 3.0, backticks were a synonym for the repr() function, which converts its argument to a string suitable for a programmer to view. However, this feature was removed in Python 3.0. Backticks also appear extensively in the reStructuredText plain text markup language (implemented in the Python docutils package).

Uses the backquote as the escape character. For example, a newline character is denoted `n. Most common programming languages use a backslash as the escape character (e.g., \n), but because Windows allows the backslash as a path separator, it is impractical for PowerShell to use backslash for a different purpose. Two backticks produce the ` character itself. For example, the nullableboolean of .NET is specified in PowerShell as [Nullable``1[System.Boolean]].